Batman: Gotham City
by Darkknight37
Summary: A series following Batman's quest to avenge his parents and protect the people of his city. The opening chapter is a prologue with the next few oneshots already posted, but are moved here.
1. When Hope is Born

I could have done more.

In the same cemetery where my parents lie, I'm watching her as everything around her is blanketed in overcast. I'm out much sooner than usual, but I owe her that. I stand behind the large tree that is naked from the oncoming threat of winter. The breeze is stiff, but she seems as unfazed by it as I am.

She's been standing in that position for twenty minutes now as she looked down, I know she saw me.

Good.

* * *

Two weeks ago, Oracle received an anonymous tip from a message board that she frequents during her free time. She's always looking around for anything sticking out that could be a lead to something big.

During her free time, remember…

She had logged in into one of her regular message board websites, specifically one that is an online haven for troubled teens. Runaways, drug abusers, abuse survivors, etc. Oracle came across a series of posts by different users that all referenced a new method of dealing drugs. One user in particular was very specific with how he used the method of using coded messages with other online users in receiving drugs.

Oracle noticed that the user was deleted from the website in risk of encouraging others to following his specific details.

She managed to save every one of his posts and was able to piece together where exactly she could find the online trail. It leads her to three ISP addresses, one in particular that had more frequent traffic than the other two.

Oracle identified the ISP address that was registered to a man by the name of Ramon Escobar. I did a background check; Mr. Escobar is a physical trainer for the wealthy circle in Gotham. Well paid, I heard he's been mostly guilty for having affairs with the married women of powerful men.

He is a widowed father with a sixteen year old daughter named Patricia. She attends St. Andrews Private School, a school that focuses on troubled young women. Patricia has ties to the local gang The LoBoys, where her twenty-six year old boyfriend is a highly ranked street soldier. Oracle even managed to find out that her ex-boyfriend was a younger member of the LoBoys, until her current one sent him to an emergency room for spying for a rival gang.

Since then, Patricia has been used by the LoBoys in countless drug dealings with their customers through the internet. The LoBoys had lost enough product from trying to deal on the streets, so they sought to find another means of pushing their drugs.

Patricia had been dealing for almost nine months now; the online trail goes to countless upper class residents of Gotham. All of which have children old enough to be interested in what the LoBoys had to offer. Oracle was able to send anonymous emails to the parents of each child while I focused on the source.

A day after Oracle found the trail; I followed Patricia home from school as Matches Malone. I waited outside of her school in an old Dodge with no identifiable features that stood out.

She was chauffeured by her father's Bentley after Patricia said her goodbyes to other classmates as they exited the school. The school uniforms they wore seemed a bit to revealing for this being a reform school, but Patricia's uniform made her seem over dressed compared to the other girls. The girls here were no different than some who attend Gotham High. However those kids don't have the parents with the money to send them to a school like this.

It doesn't make the wealthy parents saints by any measure. The majority of these parents love the fact that they can pay someone else to handle their responsibilities for them.

The bug I planted in the Bentley earlier is working perfectly. I hear the conversation, talk of her progress in school coming along perfectly. She says that her latest evaluation scored her the highest since she had enrolled.

I can also hear the sounds of her legs rubbing against the leather interior.

The car leads back to their house in Berkley Hills, an exclusive Gotham suburb and a place where you want to raise your kids. Ramon Escobar is scheduled to have a session with a "well paying" client in an hour, meaning Patricia is free to make some of her deliveries.

Escobar leaves within twenty minutes of bringing Patricia home; she left four minutes after he did. Patricia rode her bike to the exit of her subdivision, where her boyfriend's lowrider pickup truck waited for her. He quickly loaded her bike in the bed of his truck as she entered the cab with an order sheet with delivery spots folded in her hand.

I was able to follow them as they made their rounds. One stop after another as she passed out small packages discretely from the passenger window, they spread their product all around town. I counted twenty-six stops across town, with at least twenty bucks per package. From what I remember, they mostly pushed marijuana, cocaine and sometimes crack. The LoBoys always try pushing newly acquired narcotics, but most of their customers today purchased marijuana.

The fall sun began to set early, just in time for me to change clothes.

I'm Batman as I trail them back to an old house on Gotham's lower eastside, one of those neighborhoods where you don't want to raise your kids in. This is LoBoys turf, as their taggings can be seen sporadically around the area.

I realize that I need to get to her alone.

She's young enough to turn her back on all of this if done properly. The trick is to use my patience as I let the rest of the gang go about their daily routine. The house is obviously a party house as loud music is played and alcohol can be smelled from where I am on the roof.

Below me is a window to a bedroom, where Patricia and her boyfriend now find themselves. I don't have to watch to know what's going on. His grunts and moans mixed with her muffled voice gives me more information than I want. Other than the fact that he's sexually active with a minor, I want to break his ribs for making me listen to it.

After he's finished, I hear her say to him in a forced accent that she's going for a walk. When she receives a reply in snoring, she leaves the room. I quickly work my way to the front of the house where I see Patricia dodging other members of the LoBoys as she made her way out, most of them wanting her to give them what she just gave her boyfriend.

She continued walking as she flipped them off, heading towards the unlit portion of the neighborhood. I find myself on the top of a house that is condemned, giving shelter to a few homeless families. Patricia's phone rings and I hear her talking to her dad. She tells him that a friend picked her up and she's at the mall. The conversation is short after her father fails to ask for further information. She hangs up routinely and replaces the phone in her hand with a pipe.

She looks down in her purse to find her lighter, only to find me directly in front of her when she raises her head.

"Shit!" she screamed as LoBoys laughed from a good enough distance.

They must have thought something scared her.

As her pipe hit the ground, she tried to turn and run only to be stopped my hands on her shoulders.

"I know where you go during the day, Patricia", I said as she struggled in my hands.

Her fear is accompanied by shock as she hears me hiss her name. She's now petrified of me.

"Your boyfriend won't last long in his game, don't go down with him."

I turned to leave, only to hear her find her voice.

"He…I'm pregnant", she slowly says, her accent nowhere to be found.

My hard look does not shift.

"He loves me, he does!" she says like she's tried to convince someone else before. "I do this for him and he'll take care of me and our baby."

I contemplate telling her about the last girl who, on record, said the exact same thing. Instead, I fire a grapple to the highest tree and lift myself from there.

I follow her back by rooftop as she runs awkwardly back to the house. She pushes through the same LoBoys sticking out their tongues and grabbing their crotches at her. I'm on the roof as she enters the same bedroom where her boyfriend is asleep. She's crying hysterically as she tells him what she just saw.

I hear a smack, then a quiet thud followed by a slightly louder thud, finally him screaming at her.

I hear him cursing at her, demanding to know what she told me when I reach the window. She's on the ground with him over her.

Patricia is clutching at her stomach.

I quietly panic to myself as I leap into the bedroom. He's injured before he realizes it was me. I slam his head against the wall, hoping he gets a bad concussion, the loud music blocking our noise from reaching downstairs. Before he falls limp to the ground, I'm already over Patricia. She has a mark on her face where he slapped her, and a fading mark on her stomach that matches the tip of his boot.

She was already bleeding down there.

Minutes later I break character as I walk her into the emergency section of Gotham General. The orderlies take her from me as I quickly give her name, age and tell them that she's four months pregnant. Had they not already been in awe of hearing the Batmobile roaring up to the entrance, they probably would have wasted time trying to gather themselves had I just shown up.

I'm on the rooftop, telling Oracle to have the others start patrol without me and that I'd catch up. I tell her everything that happened and I'm surprised when I hear her slightly choke up. I forget that beneath her tough exterior, she's a human being on the inside.

I have to keep telling that to _myself_ from time to time.

Not so much to keep myself from turning into some type of monster, but to remind myself that mistakes can happen.

No, not like this they can't.

I should have confronted her much earlier, rather than risk her being in that environment again. I should not have left her alone in that emotional state.

I don't have to wait to hear the condition of her child.

I already know as I drop to my knees.

Another innocent lost.

* * *

I spent the last week finishing off the remainder of the LoBoys drug ring. The members behind the ring were given life sentences. An easy decision to make by the judge as two of their customers overdosed on newly distributed heroin.

Their funerals are tomorrow.

She still has yet to move from the grave of her baby girl. The funeral was a week ago, and only her father was there for support. Somehow, he managed to convince her that a move to Metropolis was a good idea. That getting out of Gotham was the only thing to save their already crippled family.

I agree with him.

They leave tomorrow morning, and Patricia is here one last time to ask her child for forgiveness.

She stopped sobbing when she noticed me twenty minutes ago, and I owe her to show myself first. I begin to walk towards her as she speaks with her back to me.

"You were right", she quietly said as I approached her. "I…I wanted something so foolish. How…how could I believe in such a thing?"

I'm directly in front of her when she turns to me. Her eyes are much different than I last remember them. They still were a deep brown, but the look on them showed the years she has aged over the past two weeks.

Another child has grown much too fast.

"I'm leaving tomorrow, I just wanted to tell Esperanza bye…"

She begins to sob before she throws herself in my arms. She's wailing out the pain as her arms find themselves around my torso. All of the training in the world could not give me the reflex action to read that. Patricia cries the tears as I'm frozen, not sure of what to do.

Then I wrap my arms around her.

Remembering what I wanted that night when I was eight years old.


	2. If Only Six Were None

"It's horrible, Batman" Gordon tells me at the latest crime scene. "This is the fourth one since Tuesday, and it's only Saturday."

Three squad cars, an ambulance and two crime scene investigators litter the ally on Case St. The lights of all of the vehicles bounce of the rain-coated brick buildings as Gordon and I talk behind a large dumpster.

When the second body was discovered on Wednesday morning, Gordon lit up the signal just before the lights of dawn blanketed the sky. It was obvious he wanted my help in case the crime was repeated again.

It was, twice since then.

"This one was a little girl", Gordon continued. "From what we gathered, she was at least six years old."

"The others were boys", I began. "If he were to follow a pattern, I would expect two more girls to follow."

"I thought that also", Gordon said. "The first three children were not molested, but there are traces of semen found around and inside the little girl."

The description angers me beyond belief. I purposely left my communicator off in my cowl; I didn't want Oracle listening to any of this.

"Everything is so random, Batman", Gordon said. "The first three bodies were found in different places. The only common elements were the parents neglectfully left their children unattended and all were found in the early morning hours before dawn."

"Two were taken while playing outside in front of their homes, one at a park", I said. "Those surrounding areas and the dump off points share nothing in common. This isn't the work of someone being clever; this is someone never visiting the same spot twice."

"I tripled the early morning patrol", Gordon said. "Can't even tell you how many cops volunteered to pull double-duty to catch this guy. Damn near almost had to turn some away."

"I suggest keeping the lights on top of each patrol car flashing", I added. "Have them all patrolling in a concentrated area. Then let about for different spots of five square miles purposely unlit by city lights or police cars. That should draw the suspect as safe areas."

"Good idea", Gordon replied. "I can have someone watching those spots without anyone ever noticing them."

"So can I."

"In the meantime", Gordon continued. "The alert we put out to parents to watch their children in the daytime should help lower the chances of abduction. Even bothered to mention to secure the rooms of children, but I bet parents aren't even going to let their kids sleep alone till we bring some closure to this matter."

We both turn as we see the body inside a bag lifted into the back of the ambulance. I turn back to see Gordon with this glasses off as he rubs the space between this eyes.

"Thing is", Gordon said reapplying his glasses. "If we don't catch him in the act, we don't have much of a chance of ever finding this guy unless we test every male in Gotham. The mayor would have a heart attack with the bill that would ring up."

I reach for my grapple then fire at the top of the building.

"Get me the results of the DNA tests", I said. "They'll be useful."

The grapple lifts me away as I hear Gordon say one last thing.

"God willing…"

* * *

Two days later, I wake up from another tragic night.

The fifth body was found, a girl as Gordon and I predicted. Same as before; mutilated, molested and found this time lying in the middle of an intersection in front of a mini-mall.

The killer is being even more random than before. This child was taken from her home as the babysitter was busy sleeping with her boyfriend in the parent's room. Gordon and the department are trying to see what charges, if any, they can bring on the babysitter and the boyfriend.

In the report, no signs of breaking and entering were found. The killer simply walked right through the unlocked door and kidnapped the child as she watched a VHS cassette of her favorite cartoon. The tape the babysitter put on was to keep the little girl occupied while she slept with her boyfriend. The babysitter said it was on because it helped put the little girl to sleep.

I had two good hours of sleep following that night. Immediately, I take my shower and brief breakfast before I head to the cave to pound my head while I try to find any link. I think back to when I was a kid and how you would never hear of crimes of this nature occurring.

Then it got me thinking on a bit of a tangent.

What if it were me that was killed and not my parents?

I gave up thinking about that scenario before I even began my training to fight the evils of the world. I believed that line of thinking would divert my focus from the tasks that were at hand. But as recent events play in my mind, I can't help but to bring play that scenario in my head and wonder the pain my parents would go through. I even wonder if they would go at any lengths, let alone the lengths I'm going through, to see that something like that would never happen to another child.

I'm wasting my time again.

After spend a good portion of the morning till the afternoon sitting at the computer, Tim comes down to see how I am.

"How was school", I asked him as he approached me from behind.

"Whoa", he said. "You said something to me first?"

I go back to being silent.

"That means no leads yet, huh?"

"Nothing…"

Tim knew that I was hell-bent on getting this case solved. The grisly nature of the murders drove me to pledge as much time as I can humanly afford to donate to this.

I was still getting nowhere.

"Well", Tim said turning to leave. "I'm gonna go wait for my pizza to get here. I've got finals coming so I need all the brain food I can…"

Tim is startled as I quickly get up and run past him.

* * *

"Three of the local neighbors ordered delivery that night. Of the three, only one other was from the pizza place the babysitter ordered from. The other was Chinese food delivered by bicycle. After interrogating each one, they all provided solid alibis that we followed up on."

That's what Gordon told me earlier.

I'm standing behind the car of one of the delivery boys right now, ready to question him further.

He had to have seen something.

The boy comes from his latest delivery at a sorority house near Gotham University. He's obviously taken no money for this order, as he's reapplying his belt while walking back to his car.

"Kevin", I say using my usual voice.

He's startled and falls on his rear when I come from around his car. The sorority parking lot is not well lit, explaining the three sexual assaults that occurred last month. I was well hidden.

"Wh…what do you want?" he finally managed to say.

"I need your help."

I don't use any of my interrogation tactics on him. I need him thinking clearly. It's obvious he on something while talking to me, which would make him incoherent if I did things how I normally would.

"I did notice something that night, that's what you're talking about right?" he said as he slowly stood up. "When the cops asked me, I didn't think anything of it."

I burned a hole through him.

"Look man, I was fucked up, alright? I deliver to colleges all the time and that night I delivered to an E party. I wasn't even thinking straight, man. And these cops…"

"Just tell me what you saw", I growled at him.

"This…this guy, man", he barely started. "Fuckin', just sitting in his truck reading the paper."

"What did the truck look like?"

"One of those big fuckin' trucks that, like, look like moving trucks. It had that door on the back that slid upwards, know what I mean?"

"What color."

"White, dude", he said losing coherence. "No, grey with that orange stripe on it."

I turn from him raising my grapple.

"Get off of the E, Kevin", I tell him. "Or I'll make sure you wind up accidentally doing it around me, and I wouldn't suggest that."

After all, I owed him a favor for the information.

The grapple fires and I leave Kevin with a story that will get altered significantly before can he tell it to his buddies.

* * *

I have Oracle searching for any company that uses trucks with that description. She found two companies in particular; one was actually a moving company and another was for the Gotham Times. I found it hard to believe that anyone in the neighborhood would fail to notice this truck parked with a man inside reading a paper.

A paper…

I then tell Oracle if any businesses in the areas where the children were abducted receive the Gotham Times. Before she can give me an answer, my police scanner in my cowl picks up an APB.

The sixth child was taken.

Another little girl.

Not this time.

A 911 call was placed only a few seconds ago as a mother called from her cell phone. She was picking up her girl from the babysitter only to have been attacked in front of her home and her girl taken from her. GCPD will get to the nearest trap zone set up for the killer in only a few minutes.

I'm only a few blocks away.

I radio Gordon and let him know what to look for, a Gotham Times delivery truck that is making its daily rounds. I jump down from the rooftop and climb into my car in record time. I check the route in my onboard satellite feed, the link up I have with a Wayne satellite shows me the van turning into the ally in the closest zone.

I'm driving at full speed when I reach the end of the ally. The killer carefully backed into the ally, probably hoping for a quick drive off when he finished with whatever he planned to do. I block him in with my car and see him in the cabin staring back at me.

He jumps out of the cabin and runs for a fire escape up the side of the shortest building. I open the hatch of my car and fire a grapple to the roof. It pulls me up in time as I intercept the killer while he's running. He stops in front of me and I throw a thunderous punch at his jaw. He drops while I profile him; mid thirties Caucasian male, brown hair with random white streaks, goatee, brown eyes.

I'll remember his face for the rest of my life.

I pick him up by his throat, easily lifting him to his feet to meet my eyes with his. Those scare tactics I held back on with Kevin came out in full force with this scumbag. I knee him in his midsection, sling him over my shoulder as he doubles over and I jump off of the roof to the ground behind the van.

I use the grapple to slow myself as I place him on his feet facing the back of his truck. From behind him, I violently grab his hair and pull his head back.

"Open it."

My heart is threatening to rise up through my throat as I throw him against his truck. He slams against it as I hear the sirens begin to draw near, his hand slowly moving for the handle. He twists it and raises the door, the loud aluminum slides up and secures just under the ceiling of the cargo area.

I grab his hair again and slam his face into the edge of his truck. He falls again, clutching his broken nose as his groaning fills the space that is housing stacks of newspapers. In the center of the space, is a knapsack large enough to hold dirty laundry.

Or a little girl.

My heart is now being held back by my tongue as I place my hands on the knapsack. I thank god when the knapsack shifts in fear of me.

"It's ok", I say in my kind Bruce Wayne voice. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The bag slowly turns, obviously realizing that this was a different voice than before. I slowly undo the string of the knapsack as I place my gloved hand over the opening. The small hand of a little girl gripped on my ring finger as the knapsack opened and fell around her.

She was unharmed.

Scared, but unharmed.

The girl looked up at me with eyes that quickly transitioned from fear to the greatest sense of wonder a child can experience.

"B…Batman?"

* * *

"He's a father working two jobs", Gordon tells me from the roof of police headquarters. "He has six children."

"Three boys, three girls", I finish.

"…Right", Gordon continued. "We talked with his wife; turns out he beat them on random occasions. Sent his oldest boy to the hospital once, they easily made it to look like an accident. This wife also said that he had lost interest in being a father, which probably attributed to his motives. She was thankful that it wasn't their kids instead."

"Tell that to the other parents, Jim", I coldly say.

Gordon turns away from me for a moment as I regret my tone.

"I'm sorry, Jim. I know I'm not the only one who has been affected by this case. I just…"

I pause and look down as the words are hard to come by. Gordon turns back to see the difficulty I'm having.

"If you knew why I do what I do, then you'd understand why I feel like I've failed."

I feel Gordon's hand on my shoulder as I keep looking down.

"I've always had a good general understanding of why you do what you do, old friend", Gordon said. "But it doesn't take experiencing a tragedy to know how much it affects people. What we both do is not for thrills or glory; we do this to make a difference."

I raise my head up to meet the subtle smile Gordon had on his face.

"You did that tonight for one little girl. You've made a difference in her life for as long as she lives and you should be damn proud of yourself."


	3. Did You Hear The One About The Kid?

Katie Randall sat on her knees in her living room in complete and utter terror. Her parents lay dead on both sides of her, with gunshot wounds to their foreheads, blood soaking the white carpet around them.

Today Katie was supposed to celebrate her ninth birthday party, but she had awakened to an early morning cackle from an unfamiliar voice.

The Joker's voice.

She ran downstairs to see her parents shout at her to runaway, but Katie ran to them instead. When she had reached them, the Joker shot them both in their head with a .357 Magnum.

Now he stood by the wall, looking into his hand.

"You know, Katie", The Joker said as he failed flipping a quarter for the third time. "Normally some other whack-job would leave his decisions to a coin…"

The Joker leaned against wall of her living room where her family's photos covered the wall. The wedding picture of her parents was lying on the ground as the glass from the frame was spread across the floor in front of her. The Joker finally gave up and tossed that insufferable quarter at the body of Katie's mother, clanging against the shattered glasses frame that was a victim of the same bullet that killed her..

"But why let some piece of metal decide someone's fate…"

The Joker drew his gun and fired a bullet that shot past Katie, hitting the leg of her father. She screamed as blood splattered on her face.

"…When lead does the trick perfectly?"

Katie's cries were drowned out by the Joker's maniacal laughter. He holstered his gun underneath his jacket as he approached her. The Joker knelt down to her as she covered her eyes, his demonic smile inches from her face.

"Don't take this personally, kiddo. I'm on a quest for knowledge. You do know what knowledge is, right Katie?"

Katie sobbed and began to slowly hyperventilate

"Good", The Joker said in a patronizing tone. "Because I have a hypothesis about a certain Dork Knight, and I sure am curious…"

The Joker leaned forward, putting his face next to her ear and whispered with a voice that would haunt her as long as she lived.

"Now be a good little guinea pig and make mommy and daddy proud…"

* * *

Her name was Katie Randall.

Nine years ago, her parents were killed in her home by the Joker, on her ninth birthday. Two days ago, she was fingered by former members of the gang The LoBoys for multiple counts of murder. The majority of the victims turned out to be members of the LoBoys themselves.

Nowadays, she's referred to as Katie Blade, every one of her victims killed by a knife.

From what's been told, she cries openly after every murder she commits. As though she came out of a trance to realize the horror she had committed each time. Her victims usually turn out to have rap sheets themselves; none of them were random innocents.

She targeted criminals, making her a vigilante.

Gordon pulled her file after identifying her, her history shouting at us that her actions were almost bound to happen. After her parents were killed, she was sent to live with her aunt. Her aunt was growing more and more worried about Katie detaching herself from reality as time went on. Immediately, her aunt placed her in a special care facility that helps traumatized children. Katie was there from the ages of ten to thirteen, when she finally ran away.

Right now, I'm standing behind a one way window, watching and listening to her sedated conversation with Dr. Jeremiah Arkham. She wasn't sedated by the orderlies or anyone else for that matter, it just how she's responding to her situation.

Katie is in a gown provided by the asylum, twirling a small piece of string with her hands, which are bound, while Dr. Arkham continues to talk to her.

"It's disturbing", I hear Gordon say next to me. "An eighteen year old girl being linked to all of those murders, it's like…"

"Not linked, Jim" I say. "She was fingered and she confessed. She is a murderer."

I correct Jim as he sighs to himself. He knows that there rarely is a moment of grey when it comes to me and murderers. However, the judge saw it fit to declare Katie insane and sent her to Arkham. What worries me is that knowing that there is little to no chance of rehabilitating her.

I know how she truly feels deep within herself.

It never goes away.

"Let's just hope that they managed to keep her away from him", I offer to Jim.

"I saw to that personally", he answered. "Since he's escaped, it should be a little easier getting her settled in."

From the speaker, I hear Jeremiah continue to talk to her.

"Katie, what happened after you ran away from the home?"

I see Katie continue to twist and spin the piece of string as her face shows the mental struggle of piecing it all together again.

"I…ran away", she started. "I went to see a friend, and she let me stay with her."

"Where did you friend live?"

"She lived with her friends, she…ran away too."

I couldn't help but notice the adolescent tone she had taken on. Katie has obviously endured large amounts of emotional trauma since her parents' murder. Every life she has taken obviously weigh down on her, as though the ghosts of her victims followed her everywhere she went.

"They were all different ages, but I was one of the oldest."

"You were one of the oldest at only thirteen?"

"Yes."

I hear Gordon's mix of a groan/sigh after she says that. I almost add one of my own.

"My friend's name was Jenny", Katie continued. "We stayed at a house by the old steel mill on the south side.

"Crack Ridge", she says at the same time I silently mouth the name. "There were six of us, and we were allowed to stay at the house if we made enough crack to keep up with Big Tony's demands."

"Big Tony..?" Jeremiah asked her.

"He owned the house, but it was really a lab."

Gordon whispers to me again.

"Big Tony was found dead three years ago in that same house, killed by multiple stab wounds."

I nod.

"What happened when you didn't make enough for Big Tony?" Jeremiah asked.

Katie stared away at that piece of string some more before she barely answered.

"Then…there would be less of us living in the house. Two of us went missing over three years…Jenny was gone."

I watch her carefully as she tugs at the string a little harder. Recalling the disappearance of her friend seems to have been a major catalyst for her current condition. I look to Gordon who seems to be listening with good intent.

I know deep down he feels for her, a major reason for this her being a victim of the Joker.

"After a while, another girl came to live with us", Katie continued. "Her name was Vicki…and she was different."

"Different?" Jeremiah asked as he wrote on his tablet.

"She taught me and the other girls how to defend ourselves with knives", Katie said. "Big Tony liked her, and he made her sleep with him after a few weeks. She liked it at first, but she didn't say much of anything else. She kept teaching us how to use knives and anything else we can find if we were ever in trouble, I was learning pretty fast."

I watch her hands more carefully. If she was trained in any technique, it should show in her mannerisms. If her focus was using knives, her hands more than likely will fidget in particular patterns in the current state she is in.

"I don't know why", Katie said. "But I was getting…sicker and I couldn't remember much. But…but I kept seeing his face."

"Who..?" Jeremiah asked. "Whose face did you see?"

The string in Katie's hand found its way around her forefingers and was pulled tightly. She lazily looked back at Arkham with an empty and mortifying smile on her face.

"…The Joker."

It wasn't hard to see Gordon's silent stare into nothingness as he heard the name. If you didn't know, it looked as though he were looking through the glass at Arkham and Katie, but I know his mind is thinking back to all of the pain the Joker had caused him.

His daughter's legs.

His wife's life.

I know all of this, it's been routine over the years. He has every right to feel the way he does, yet he is not alone.

Jason…

"Big Tony killed her, because she tried to kill him first" Katie continued. "Then he tried coming at us, that's when I…"

Katie stops talking and motions with her tied-together hands in a downward, stabbing motion. Her blue eyes are as wide open as they could be with the image of Big Tony obviously in front of her again.

"Then I joined the LoBoys…but they were bad. I took care of some of them for you."

Katie smiled as though she were waiting for a pat on the head.

I see Gordon reach for his radio as it and the receiver in my cowl buzz on. We hear the reports of the Joker being spotted just three miles outside of Arkham Asylum; he's in a car chase with the police.

Katie will have to wait till later.

Gordon heads for the front exit where his car and another squad car await him. I parked behind the asylum in a ditch that is well hidden. I usually park there when I come here, no need to draw any extra attention.

After going through all of the corridors of the asylum, dodging curses in my name from the majority of the inmates who are still capable of putting sentences together, I reach the back exit.

As I open the door, something that feels like a cinderblock slams against the side of my head. I hit the ground in a daze, the cowl protecting me somewhat. The digital signal my lenses provide is nothing but static now, it switches off when such a situation arises.

I hear his laugh.

"You know, Batsy", he says. "It's ironic that you and I both use this exit when we both don't want to be seen. Even more ironic when it's you getting caught instead of me…"

He laughs again as I look up. A wooden mallet the size of a half keg rests over his shoulders. He kneels down next to me, his hot breath showing in the early winter air.

"Poor little Katie…" the bastard started. "Shame what happened to her folks, don't you think Batsy?"

I don't do or say anything. His smile stretches as his hoarse giggle comes through his teeth.

"She really did show a nice mean streak, I have to admit. I was rather surprised when she didn't begin doing her turkey carving at an earlier age. But oh well, youth these days, you know? Total lack of drive…"

He looks at me more, realizing that my silent tone won't change until I gather myself. I hear him sigh as he stands up, I watch his every move.

"Well, I guess it's time for me to turn in", he says staring at, then looking away from the watch he doesn't have on his wrist. "It's getting a little nip and I'd like to curl up in my room with a warm blanket and a good book…"

He drops his mallet next to my head, would have crushed it if it landed on me. He begins to open the door going into the asylum.

I try to say something this time.

"What…are you…doing?"

He stops and looks back with that smile.

"What do you think?" he says in his innocent high voice.. "The cost of living is insane. My loan applications kept coming up short and I can't very well sleep on the streets. And don't get me started on renting…whew."

He lowers his voice for his next line.

"We're not all millionaires, you know..."

He turns away from me as he laughs his way into Arkham, his voice fading away as the door shuts behind him.

* * *

I finish returning Jonathan Crane to Arkham Asylum when I make an effort to check on Katie Randall. Dr. Arkham says she's making good progress with her rehabilitation, despite my initial feelings. He says that Katie has come out of her shell after five months, even making a few friends with and helping out other patients.

Her six month review is coming up, Dr. Arkham says there's a good chance she can finish her rehabilitation in another month and no longer be a danger to society or herself.

That I don't believe, but I still intend on keeping an eye out for her.

"She's doing better than anyone expected", I hear Dr. Arkham behind me as I look into her cell. "Katie has conquered a lot of her demons during her time here. She's earned a second chance at life."

I say nothing.

* * *

If Katie could see herself, she would be shocked she actually fell asleep. Tomorrow is her big day, the day when she finds out if she can reenter the world, to earn a second chance. She has rehabbed herself with the help of the staff of Arkham Asylum, something that the asylum was not very successful with in previous years.

This makes Katie a survivor.

"Wakey, wakey…"

Katie is pulled from her deep sleep by a shake on her shoulder. She wonders if she overslept and one of the orderlies is waking her up. She quickly jumped up, her eyelids having trouble revealing her unfocused eyes. Knowing the room like the back of her hand, she shuffled over to her closet to begin getting dressed. She didn't care that the orderly could see her; she's done this hundreds of times before

"I'm so sorry", she says. "I just couldn't sleep and…"

"Oh I don't think that will be a problem, Katie."

She slows at the familiar voice, but it wasn't one she had heard recently.

"You've made mommy and daddy so proud", the voice said again. "You've done a lot of horrible things, but it wasn't your fault. No, no…you were merely acting on thoughts that were not your own, but thoughts of someone who wanted revenge…"

The low, calm tone of that familiar voice slowly and hauntingly echoed in her cell. Katie's eyes began to focus as she regained control of her eyelids. She turned from the closet to see him sitting on her bed in his Arkham clothing, playing with a knife.

"Am I right?" the Joker asked.

She sees the knife in his hands as he stands up. After doing his bad impression of a musketeer slashing and stabbing the cardinal's evil minions, the Joker placed the knife on the bed and backed away from it.

His smile and the knife are the only things Katie can see now.

"I'm very proud of you Katie", he says. "You've basically proven a point that I had already known. Heh, I don't think I really needed you actually. But oh well, it was fun."

His giggle began to wipe away six hard months of rehabilitation from Katie. She never forgot how to use a knife, she still considered herself well prepared had she needed to defend herself in a life or death situation. Katie knew all she needed to do was move over to that knife and pick it up.

Everything after that was academic.

She quickly moved over and swiped up the knife. She turned to his still smiling face and thrust the knife into his midsection.

However, to her surprise, the sound of flesh being penetrated was replaced by metal clanging on metal. Katie's eyes shot open as her knife was know bent and no longer effective.

The Joker shook his head and clicked his tongue in disappointment.

"Katie, Katie, Katie…" he said as he whipped out a knife from his right arm's long sleeve. "Try it like this…"

He brought up his hand a slashed her throat from right to left. Katie's blood-filled gargling and wheezing filled the room as the Joker wiped off the blood that sprayed from her onto him. She fell to her knees, trying to preserve her own life. Katie slumped to the ground as her life began to slip away.

She looked up to see the Joker do his fencing moves again.

"All for one, one for all, every lunatic for himself!"

He stopped shadow-dueling as he turned to Katie's body on the ground. He placed the blood stained knife in her hands that finally slumped to the ground. The few seconds of her life was spent hearing that horrifying voice whispering in her ear one last time.

"Say hi to mommy and daddy for me."


End file.
